Not content with dorking up the budget, Congress wants to "act" on cyberspace security... Republican Senator John McCain called on Wednesday for the creation of a bipartisan panel to draft long-sought legislation to combat data breaches and espionage aimed at U.S. companies and defense networks. "The only way to move comprehensive cyber security legislation forward swiftly is to have committee chairmen and ranking members step away from preserving their own committees' jurisdiction ... (and) develop a bill that serves the national security needs of all Americans," McCain wrote. So why do we have all these various jurisdictions? Well, lets look at who's responsible for "cybersecurity" by looking at prevailing authorities from US Code: Title 6 (Homeland Security) Title 10 (Military) Title 22 (State) Title 32 (National Guard) (maybe) Title 40 (Chief Information Officer) - you have scroll down to Section III...but it's there Title 44 (Protection of Federal Info). Actually there is a bill pending to update this, including language that the "Cyber Czar" would be a nominated position requiring Senate Confirmation. and of course....our favorite....Title 50 (Intelligence) So, what's on the table here? Well, depending on how you look at it, EVERYTHING. Yes, on the one hand McCain is right - there's a lot of jurisdictions here. But that's because cyberspace is a pretty pervasive environment. Lets do something! Those darn "hackers" are stealing EVERYTHING! And doing bad things in "cyberspace". Makes sense. Except, there's one problem: What is "cyber"? Look for a definition of "cyber". (not "cyberspace" or "cybernetics". Just "cyber".) Good luck with that. I'm not going to wait for you to catch up. So what's the plan? Create a new committee and move all the jurisdiction to THAT committee? The case against a new "select" committee means starting from scratch, which is probably not going to help us "catch up". And we all know how effective legislation is against the Chinese and Russians. (According to commenters from my previous post, that's who we're fighting.) So I, for one, am reassured knowing that McCain is on the case! Anyway, the article from Reuters is here. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/13/us-usa-cybersecurity-congress-idUSTRE76C7DH20110713
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Posted
Jul 15 2011, 09:32 PM
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BLACKFIVE